1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to the field of contact center operations, and more particularly to the field of end-to-end testing of chat-based client interaction software systems.
2. Discussion of the State of the Art
In the field of contact center operations, traditionally communication between agents and customers is performed via voice-based systems such as traditional telephony or voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) systems. However, more centers are beginning to accommodate additional, text-based communications such as Internet-based chat software commonly found in the art, to better serve customers who may not have access to or desire to utilize a voice connection. A common example of this would be a customer browsing through an online catalog on a company's website. In such a scenario, a customer might have a question about a product, and both customer and company may benefit from the inclusion of a convenient chat interface within a webpage, allowing customers to communicate directly with agents while still browsing the online catalog and from the convenience of their computer. This allows more convenient and speedy communications, without the need to navigate a telephony-based interactive voice interactive voice recognition (IVR) system to reach an agent or waiting in long queues for an agent to become available. It also allows more flexible communications, such as a customer who may be viewing an online catalog from an Internet café or similar public location, where they may not have access to a telephone or may not desire for their conversations to be overheard by others.
In accordance with this shift in contact center methodology, it will be appreciated that there exists a need to test and evaluate chat-based systems to ensure reliable contact center operation and resolve issues that might impact customer interactions, such as frozen chat sessions or delay in text transmission. It will be appreciated that such testing systems should also accommodate a variety of endpoints, such as chat interfaces embedded in webpages, dedicated chat software to be run on a personal computer or mobile chat applications, without affecting the reliability of test results and without requiring human interaction or modification.
There exist in the art testing methods for voice communications, but it will be appreciated that such methods may not translate well to text-based systems. Furthermore, while there are chat testing systems implemented in the art currently, such systems require the interaction of a testing agent to operate, which introduces new problems such as additional expense for the time and labor involved in testing, human error factor which may influence reliability of testing protocols, and various inconsistencies associated with human operation.
What is needed is a flexible and scalable automated testing solution for chat-based communications, which may operate in parallel with a production environment without impacting ongoing customer interactions and which may accommodate a variety of endpoints and infrastructure implementations without negatively impacting testing reliability. In addition, what is needed is a means to facilitate end-to-end testing of chat-based communications, that allows testing of chat frontend software in a manner that accurately represents actual usage and does not interfere with actual client interactions.